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Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

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Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#401

Post by kepano »

jonahx wrote: post #394
kepano wrote: post #272

I built Obsidian Web Clipper (open source, MIT) to replace my read-it-later app and save everything to local markdown files. Now that Obsidian Bases is available, it makes for a very nice web archival tool and reading experience. Here's a video: https://mastodon.social/@kepano/114553164915046938 You can use Web Clipper with any app that supports Markdown, not just Obsidian. Defuddle is the underlying HTML-to-Markdown…

This is very cool. The thing I really want is this, combined with some automated local background LLM training / rag (not sure what the right approach is) process. So that, at the end of the day, everything I bookmark get saved locally, can be read in a nice format like you have the video, and be semantically queried, and it's all local: "What was that article I saw read 1-3 months ago some new type of LLM training?"…

Since the content is saved to Markdown you can use it with pretty much any tool that will ingest that content.

There's also Obsidian Web Clipper's Interpreter feature, which lets you run prompts on a web page before saving:

https://help.obsidian.md/web-clipper/interpreter

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#402

Post by basisword »

al_borland wrote: post #289
randomor wrote: post #226

Wow, after Instapaper went back to indie from Pinterest[1] and Omnivore closing last year this is no longer surprising. This is also proof that read-it-later app as a category is not sustainable as a venture / company backed service. This is also a category of app that I believe could be better served by local-first native apps. As there is no reason why a server has to be requirement to enjoy the full service. Your…

Apple also has a read later service built into Safari. It’s not the most feature rich, but it has existed for several years now. I’d be curious on the stats of these services. Myself, I save a lot of things with good intentions and then never go back to actually read anything later. For a stand alone service, this is the worst. I send them data to store, then never do anything with it. I have to imagine this is quite…

>> Apple also has a read later service built into Safari. It’s not the most feature rich, but it has existed for several years now.

I was a big Instapaper user until they added Reading List to Safari. It's just enough features, it's built into all my devices, and it's the thing that keeps me using Safari too (Chrome's reading list implementation sucks).

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#403

Post by randomor »

tetrisgm wrote: post #385
randomor wrote: post #226

Wow, after Instapaper went back to indie from Pinterest[1] and Omnivore closing last year this is no longer surprising. This is also proof that read-it-later app as a category is not sustainable as a venture / company backed service. This is also a category of app that I believe could be better served by local-first native apps. As there is no reason why a server has to be requirement to enjoy the full service. Your…

This looks like a lovely body of work. I do have to say I am reluctant to even try it because the idea of essentially hijacking the copy shortcut really makes me anxious. Especially because I often press command c multiple times to ensure the thing I want is registered. Using that as a trigger sounds like it would punish me. I’d normally brush this off, but here the entirety of the pitch is centered around the idea o…

That's how it inspired me to create this app really. I often do this to important text subconsciously so one day I asked what if i can automatically save that... It feels intuitive and avoids the extensions.

With that said, you can disable this double copy trigger easily, it's an menu bar option if you right click the icon. Also there are other ways to capture: share sheet, service menu, drag and drop into the app icon or into the menu bar icon.

On ios, it doesn't have this double copy magic obviously, so it just functions as a normal pretty read-it-later app. Hope that clarify things!

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#404

Post by cptskippy »

criddell wrote: post #267
pjmlp wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari is the only reason we don't rename (yet) Web as ChromeOS development platform. Thanks everyone, especially all those Electron crap apps.

I think once Apple is forced to allow alternative browsers on the iPhone and iPad, Chrome/Chromium will have won the browser wars. At least Google is a better steward of their browser than Microsoft was with IE6.

Microsoft's goal was to make sure the browser didn't obviate Windows.

Google's goal is to push ads and you can see that with everything their doing. Manifest v3 castrates adblockers and their attempts to remove 3rd party cookies would stifle any competition in adtech.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#405

Post by boomboomsubban »

edoceo wrote: post #390
kbrosnan wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the MZLA Technologies Corporation a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. Firefox is developed by the Mozilla Corporation a wholly owned part of the Mozilla Foundation.

How did they even get this corporation owned by a foundation situation? That just seems like some kind of tax trick.

Yes. Mozilla was originally only the non profit, but it was ruled that selling the search rights violated nonprofit status. So they paid a couple million in back taxes and had to spin off a corporate entity that's fully owned by the nonprofit.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#406

Post by alwillis »

nine_k wrote: post #249
segphault wrote: post #71

I was a user for so long that I was on it before it even rebranded as Pocket. I finally gave up on it last year, mostly due to frustration with the terrible 2023 redesign of the mobile app. When Mozilla made the unfathomable decision to become an internet advertising company, I figured it was just a matter of time before they had to put Pocket out to pasture. A product that's designed to strip ads from content for re…

> available in every other browser Isn't it because almost every "other browser" reuses the Chromium engine? Or is Firefox trailing even mobile Safari here?

WebKit, which powers Safari on all its platforms has been ahead of Firefox on a number of features.

For example, the WebKit team shipped :has() in March 2022. Chrome shipped in August of that year and Firefox even later: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33646121

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#407

Post by Multicomp »

fkfyshroglk wrote: post #205
segphault wrote: post #71

I was a user for so long that I was on it before it even rebranded as Pocket. I finally gave up on it last year, mostly due to frustration with the terrible 2023 redesign of the mobile app. When Mozilla made the unfathomable decision to become an internet advertising company, I figured it was just a matter of time before they had to put Pocket out to pasture. A product that's designed to strip ads from content for re…

> A product that's designed to strip ads from content for readability doesn't align with their new direction. Interesting. I saw it as a glorified bookmarking service and saw the readability concerns as what raised red flags for me: mozilla just inherently isn't interested in competing on value rather than on marketing.

They killed off the live bookmarks feature that I still miss in favor of this and it was never the same.

My rss feeds are still around from then. Glad I didn't invest in this fad.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#408

Post by codethief »

asciimoo wrote: post #286
sambaumann wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

anyone have any good suggestions for a self-hosted option?

I'm using & developing Omnom (read-only demo: https://omnom.zone/ ). It is self-hosted, free software, fediverse compatible and creates 1:1 snapshots of the saved websites: https://github.com/asciimoo/omnom

Great project name!

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#409

Post by ternaryoperator »

sdk16420 wrote: post #139
_def wrote: post #18

> Your export file will include links (URLs) of your saved items. The export does not extract the text of saved links. Additionally, the export does not contain tags or highlights. boo! without the tags, the links will be mostly useless for me. Every now and then I thought aboyt switching to some self-hosted solution. Should've done it sooner... and I will never trust Mozilla with any service again.

Not to mention they charged $45 a year for a service that included backups in their cloud should your save become a dead link. Imagine paying that amount for several years and when you need it they pull the rug. https://web.archive.org/web/20250321050043/https://getpocket...

On that archived page: "A forever home for your collection"

Forever just doesn't mean what it used to.

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